Latin American Program in the News: Mexico develops southern border strategy

Midland Reporter-Telegram

"[...] Mexican authorities 'don’t think of migration from Central America as necessarily bad,” said Eric L. Olson, associate director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center. “A million and a half Central Americans are crossing that border every year, the vast majority of them not to go to the United States but to go to work in Mexico.”

“The southern border has been the forgotten border for decades,” added the Wilson Center’s Olson. “The fact that Mexico is thinking about how it wants to build security there, how it wants to work with Guatemalans and other Central Americans, is an important step forward.

“But it’s absurd to think that we in the United States can impose our view on a border that’s not even ours,” Olson added. “To think we can seal that border is a grand fallacy.”'